My Biggest Blogging Struggles

Not enough time to write

Lack of organization

Lack of promotional schedule

I feel like I’m keeping myself stuck because of the limited time I have to spend on the blog.

Although I am passionate about my audience and serving its needs, but haven’t quite figured out how to make that happen while working full-time, raising two children, and being a great partner to my husband.

CoSchedule is a drag-and-drop editorial calendar for WordPress that puts your blog posts and social media messages on the same schedule.

How I Use CoSchedule Every Day

-during writing blog posts to add social shares

-get an overview of the upcoming social shares I have scheduled

-helps me ensure I’m being active on social media

-helps me see additional time slots available to promote blog posts

How CoSchedule Gives Me More Time to Write

CoSchedule helps me have more time to write because I don’t have to manually schedule social media updates.

This screen shows basic post information along with any upcoming social media shares I’ve scheduled, social analytics, and that circled number represents the score of this headline using the “Headline Analyzer.” It is a free tool that will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.

With the “Top Posts” feature, I can get a quick overview of which posts have done the best on social media and quickly set up several re-shares.

How CoSchedule Organizes My Blog Life

I’m more organized with CoSchedule. I can organize my ideas, see the big picture of blog posts I have planned for the month (AKA my editorial calendar), get a feel for how many social media posts I have scheduled (AKA social media campaigns), and have a list of tasks to complete for each post.

CoSchedule‘s recommended list of tasks to complete before scheduling a blog post:

This helps me stay consistent with my blog posts and social media schedule by pre-planning days, weeks, and months in advance with reusable social templates.

How I Use CoSchedule for My Promotional Schedule

On an average 30 day period, over 80% of my visitors are new. That means that only about 20% of the visitors have ever been to my blog before.

Yes, it’s great to create fresh new content. But, let’s face it, only 20% of the readers know that this is a new post.

So, I’m doing myself and the new readers a disservice if I don’t let them know about the content I wrote the day before, the week before, last month, and last year.

Here’s an empty “social queue.” Using the queue, you’ll be able to easily share your content on social media more than once and create a steady drip of traffic back to your site. You’ll also be able to easily share your older posts with your new readers.

How do I know how often to promote my posts on social media? What days and times are best?

I can use this on a new post or go back to an old post and apply a Social Template. My current template includes:

Twitter, today, same time as publish

Twitter, today, in 1 hour

Pinterest, today, at the best time for my followers

Facebook, today, five hours after publish

Twitter, tomorrow, at the best time for my followers

This repeats on Twitter from 2-9, 12, 19, 20, 22, 25, 27, and 30 days after publish

Twitter, two days later, at the best time for my followers

Twitter, three days later, at the best time for my followers

Twitter, four days later, at the best time for my followers

Twitter, next week, at the best time for my followers

Twitter, eight days later, at the best time for my followers

Twitter, nine days later, at the best time for my followers

Twitter, next month, at the best time for my followers

Facebook, next month, at the best time for my followers

That’s nearly 30 messages! Last year, I only used to schedule about seven for each post. Look at how much my traffic has increased – nearly 60% more pageviews comparing 2017 to 2016!

Coschedule makes it easy to do this with just updating the initial template. Then, I can apply this updated message to all of my new posts.

Don’t worry that you’ll be publishing the same social message. Coschedule shows you how to easily and quickly come up with 20-25 headlines/messages including questions, quotes, controversial tidbits, anecdotes, and more.

This takes me literally one second to apply the Social Template. That’s four tweets, one pin, and two Facebook posts, in seconds!

I can edit any of the messages if I want, or I can leave them alone and publish as is. Here’s how the queue of upcoming posts look:

CoScheduleguides me on the appropriate number of social posts to create. I based my schedule on CoSchedule‘s recommended schedule:

I’m going to assume that a percentage of my blog readers also follow me on at least one of the social networks. So now the reader will see a new post published today along with an old post I published (that he or she has never seen before).

How CoSchedule Makes Sure I’m Not Overwhelmed

It’s like having a virtual assistant.

Every Saturday morning, I get an email from CoSchedulerecapping how many blog posts and social messages I posted during the week.

There’s a link to the posts, a total of the Social Shares, Incomplete Tasks, and Upcoming Social Messages. There’s even a warning/reminder to “Schedule additional social messages to increase traffic.”

The email also includes a recap of what’s scheduled for next week and a prompt to “Re-Share Top Posts.” CoSchedule maintains a list of your top performing blog posts. They recommend sharing these posts regularly to gain steady traffic with links to a few of your best posts that could use some additional promotion.

Why I Recommend CoSchedule

I’ve been using CoSchedulefor nearly three years. In that time, they’ve added an app, podcast (Actionable Marketing Podcast), Requeue, Headline Analyzer, Pinterest integration, Chrome browser extension, Social Templates, Social Campaigns, a Google Analytics Custom Dashboard, the Social Media Schedule Gauge, Best Time Scheduling (a tool that takes the guesswork out of what time to post your social media messages), and more!

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About Me

Welcome! I'm Raki. I am a married working mom of two, coffee drinker, and list maker. I have a 14-year old son and 7-year old daughter. I share tips to balance work, family, and make time for you. Learn More...

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